In His Gaze
by Stodgey
Summary: On Ralph, and what he doesn't want to see in Jack's eyes. JackRalph slash. Violence and issues of consent.


**A/N: Well, it's certainly been a long time since I've ventured into this fandom. I'm loving the amount of JackRalph slash I'm seeing around these parts at the moment. Makes a girl extremely happy.**

**I know that there is still quite a considerable interest in me adding more to _Twisted Love _and I'll definitely take a good stab at it soon-ish. Unfortunately, my style of writing has changed quite considerably over the months since I've last updated it, so I don't know quite how it'll turn out, nor am I quite sure about the plot yet. :-D**

**Well, onto more immediate stories. This is a one-shot from a perspective that I don't normally write in and which was a bit of an experiment, so bear with me here please. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, though it's become longer than it was meant to be originally. Forgive me any continuity errors with the book as I last read it about a year ago during my GCSEs.**

**Disclaimer: Golding's, the clever bastard.**

**Warning: If you were dense enough to miss it in the summary, I'll reiterate.This is SLASH, and a bit violent at that. Feel free to flame me on the subject if you wish, though I've got to say it would be pretty pointless.**

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**In his gaze**

It was in his gaze; the first clue, the first hint, the first frisson of unease. You didn't understand it to begin with, put it all down to Jack's general intensity, assumed it was the same for everyone. But it wasn't – that you could've possibly thought it had been was almost laughable now.

If only you had realised it before.

* * *

Jack's eyes were a glassy blue framed by golden-red eyelashes, his pupils dark and engorged from beneath the shade of a palm tree, staring out of his freckle-consumed pale face, his chin angled strongly and jutting defiantly in your direction. Staring at you with a strange ferocity. Anything you said, he challenged, as if it were all a game to him. As if it were good fun. His glare became such a common sight that it became inscribed on your awareness, so much so that you didn't even have to look at him when you felt his eyes bore into your back, knowing exactly what you would see. 

You always did anyway. Couldn't help yourself from turning and locking eyes with him, the same uncontrollable shiver emanating from just below the prominent bars of your ribs, making it suddenly difficult to draw breath. It was as if he were trying to cause physical damage with that stare, his eyes ice picks angled towards your heart. And it hurt.

But your calm brown eyes still met his every time. It was as if you enjoyed the pain.

_

* * *

_

_You like this, don't you? You bloody like it when I hurt you._

* * *

You were utterly clueless. Swaggering around like a small kid, giving pointless orders to uncomprehending babies, thinking you had the right to do so because you were Chief. 

_Chief_. Jack showed you how little he cared about that word, showed you just how little respect he held for it – unless it applied to him, of course. But it's always been that way with Jack, so perhaps it shouldn't have come as such a surprise. It certainly shouldn't have caused burning moisture to well up in your eyes, you know that for certain. Despite the pain and despite what Jack thinks, it was the shock, and you feel so stupid now. You knew his arrogance from the first day, his black cape swirling about him in the sticky heat, and you should have been prepared.

His eyes should have told you.

* * *

Simon tried to warn you, you think. Before his death, you mean. 

You still feel unclean and not right. As if you ripped at your own subconscious as you scrabbled at his warm skin, peeling off layers of your brain tissue as blood seeped under your grimy nails. You killed him and you haven't been feeling quite whole since.

And guilty – of course – you've been feeling guilty as well. Though you only admit your part in the killing to yourself – no one else, although you know they all know – and only when you feel like you deserve to be punished. And that makes you feel even worse.

_Coward._

But Simon's eyes were dazed and bloodshot half the time, and you found unravelling him an even greater task than you found Jack. You couldn't look him in the face – couldn't meet his sombre gaze – because you began to feel dizzy and light-headed when you did, as if he was gifting you his own mental state.

Perhaps he was.

Crazy, that's what Simon was. That's what got him killed, too. So you really couldn't be expected to take an ill-formed mouthful of mumbled, mismatched words as the truth, however much they touched a raw, bleeding nerve inside. You couldn't have been expected to know.

_Jack likes you, Ralph. That's what I think, anyway. You need to be careful. It's not the island, it's us._

It had made no sense. Simon had been batty, alright.

You had liked him.

_

* * *

_

_If I had been Chief, I would have done it better. Before, right? I'm talking about before. I'm doing it better now and you can't do anything to stop me. I'm going to crush you. Serve you right._

_You like this, don't you? You bloody like it when I hurt you._

* * *

It had come as a complete surprise, sometime in between Simon's death and Piggy being murdered, when Jack had visited you. Ambushed you, to be fair. If it hadn't been such a shock, you would have been prepared and ready and not so bloody easily beaten. It wasn't fair, but life wasn't fair, and perhaps it was all your fault anyway for not opening your eyes to what was before you. 

His eyes.

They told the entire story to everyone and anyone but you, it seems.

It was his gaze you felt first, digging into your back as if determined to burrow all the way through the soft flesh of your body until it was forcing its way out through your chest, manifesting in a sharp, prickling feeling across the sweat-damp nape of your neck. You stiffened, knowing it was him intrinsically, and you half turned your head from where you were crouched down at the stream, hands filled with cool water which was trickling enthusiastically through the tiny cracks between your fingers, cupped and close to your lips as if preparing to drink. Your eyes scanned the silent, dense undergrowth surrounding you, your cupped hands draining slowly dry, losing their moisture to the sandy soil beneath you, not seeing him yet holding the inescapable, nervous knowledge that he was hunting.

Hunting you.

The standoff dragged on for long moments, time meaning little or nothing on the island, and you shifted slightly as a beetle trailed over your foot, blinking sweat furiously out of your eyes as the humidity pressed in around you.

Suddenly, there was a slight rustle directly behind you, just outside the edge of your vision, and before you could turn to meet the danger head on, Jack was on top of you, knocking you sideways and sending you sprawling. You made a muffled noise of protest into the ground and brought your grubby hands beneath you to lever yourself back up, but he jumped on you, forcing you back to the ground and violently knocking the air out of you, grabbing your hands in a tight grip in his own painted ones and grinding your face into the damp soil. You struggled for a desperate moment, panic and outrage blinding you, then lay still beneath his hard, warm, damp body, sucking air in desperately through your nose as you concentrated on not inhaling dirt, chest heaving in exertion.

_Ralph. Good to see you._

You gritted your teeth and suddenly reared upwards, kicking with your feet and dislodging Jack enough to drag back your hands, scrabbling to find purchase as you tried to rise. Halfway to your feet and you were hit hard in the gut, his paint daubed arms wrapping themselves firmly about your stomach, his whole body cannoning into you, his momentum carrying you backwards into the stream. You tripped and lost your footing, landing painfully on your hip in the water, your elbow grazing over the small, sharp rocks on the stream bed. A muffled choking sound escaped your lips as one of Jack's hands entwined cruelly about your neck, cutting off your air and forcing you backwards into the sun dappled water. You splashed desperately, certain he was trying to kill you, your hands scrabbling for purchase on the banks as your mouth was immersed totally, panicked bubbles furiously escaping from your lips. Then your entire face was submerged.

Jack held you underwater for what felt an eternity, his bitten nails digging cruelly into the tendons of your neck, shaking you slightly as your struggles continued. You were running out of air, choking on the silt-stirred murky water which was pooling in your mouth.

You thought you were going to die.

Suddenly, Jack lurched to the side, dragging you upwards and across, pulling you bodily out of the water as you coughed violently, hacking up all the moisture from your lungs as well as trying to breathe in the life-giving ozone at the same time, your eyes screwed shut in the effort and your hands balled into fists. Once back fully on dry land, hands on your skin firmly turned you onto your stomach, and Jack's weight was on top of you again, though not as oppressively this time. A wet, warm hand imposed itself between your shoulder blades, rubbing slightly in an almost comforting manner until you had choked up all the muddy water and bile that you were going to, the slippery mixture soaking into the sandy soil beneath your face. The rubbing stopped and Jack encased your hands in his tight grip once more, the dark war paint now streaked with pale skin where the water had washed it away.

His imprisonment of your hands didn't really matter. You were exhausted and breathing was your top priority now, escape far from your dazed mind.

_You stupid idiot. Trying to kill yourself?_

He brought both your hands behind your back, twisting your arms painfully in their sockets, transferring them both to the imprisonment of just one of his own hands, the other free to insinuate itself in your hair, dragging your head achingly backwards until his mouth was at your ear.

_I won't let you kill yourself, Ralph. If anyone kills you, it's going to be me._

You didn't argue with his forcefully spat words, not even to suggest that you had been trying to save yourself, your neck hurting from its tightly arched back position. You were too tired and it was too hot and your head was pounding, your blood thumping closely in your ears in time to the steady drone of your heart.

Jack let your head drop, his hand skittering down the bronzed skin of your back and raising goose flesh in its wake, the red clay on his fingers smearing over your flesh and giving the appearance of blood. He hummed slightly in the back of his throat, the sound low and delighted, and you shivered despite the sweat dripping from your temples.

_How's your tribe, Ralph? Eating meat and having fun like mine?_

You thought back to Samneric and Piggy, huddled together on the beach, hugging the sides of the pathetic shelters which only served as a resemblance of a home, trying to recreate the semblance of normality. Simon's death was heavy on their minds, and the responsibility of rescue and sanity was a dragging burden.

You didn't want to think about Jack's tribe. If you thought about them, you feared that you would know for certain that they didn't care about Simon. And worse, you feared that it might seem appealing – their reckless and violent enjoyment of life, regardless of consequences.

_If I had been Chief, I would have done it better. Before, right? I'm talking about before. I'm doing it better now and you can't do anything to stop me. I'm going to crush you. Serve you right._

Jack crushed his body into yours, dragging forth a ragged groan from your mouth as he abused you further, punctuating every word with a sharp pinch of the soft, vulnerable skin on your side. He rubbed against you roughly, dragging your chest over the coarse soil and causing the skin to burn, his rocking becoming more and more violent as he forced you into the ground. His hand trailed up your body and circled the back of your neck, bitten nails digging in painfully, aggravating the already bruised and broken skin from before.

You groaned again, your conscious mind filled with sharp slices of pain, your vision filling with dancing black and purple spots as the foliage about you blurred into an indistinguishable earthy mass.

_You like this, don't you? You bloody like it when I hurt you._

Your words of protest were choked off abruptly as he forced your head backwards once more, hair held painfully tightly in his unforgiving grip, your scalp on fire. Your neck was forcefully arched, unnatural, the pale skin stretched tightly and the pulse point under your jaw flickering visibly. You knew he watched as you struggled to swallow, your throat constricted too much and the process becoming so painful that you gave up. Defeated.

_I like you more when you're like this._

And he rolled off you, hand still entwined in the grimy strands of your hair, sinuously moving around your prone body until he was crouched in the soil directly before your eyes, his other hand releasing your own hands and moving to hold your jaw.

You stared up at him, his pale blue eyes filling your vision, the intensity of his gaze making you feel small and vulnerable, the emotion behind them clear and yet indecipherable. You wouldn't believe the truth of that gaze. You couldn't, despite the evidence of the past few moments. It wasn't possible.

He grinned lazily at you, his clay and mud darkened face splitting in two, slashed through the middle by the slice of his white teeth. Then, before you could react, he smashed his dry lips against yours.

You'd never been kissed like that before – not like the kisses in the movies. It was clumsy and awkward and painful, Jack's teeth clashing against yours, nipping at your lips hard enough to draw blood, chewing on the corner of your mouth until you gasped. His lips were scratchy against yours, burnt by the sun, and the grip of the hand in your hair was still unrelenting, still forcing you back painfully. He towered over you from his crouched position, his face set hard and fierce, leaning into your mouth and sucking hungrily, as if he were trying to consume you, sucking you out of your mouth and swallowing you whole. He bit down hard on your bottom lip, rolling it in between his teeth with a grunt of satisfaction, his nails digging into your jaw, not stopping until you moaned in pain and gingerly opened your mouth to him. He thrust his tongue inside, a burning, foreign object in your mouth, and you tried unsuccessfully not to gag as he forced it deeper than you would have thought possible, your own tongue lying passive and unmoving, the muscle feeling like thick, rotting lead.

Suddenly, he was gone, his hands removed from your hair and your jaw, and you sagged back down to the floor, your face lying weakly on the cool earth, panting slightly, your lips bleeding and your hands trembling at your sides.

He stood smoothly, raking his hand through his red hair to keep it back out of his eyes, and he grinned down at you, hunger still dancing in his gaze.

_I knew you'd like it._

You swivelled your gaze upwards until you could make out his face, his smile. His eyes. You blinked, uncontrollable hot tears oozing down your face, a sob catching in your throat.

You had to admit what you saw in his gaze now. There was no denying it.

_End_

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**Reviews would, as always, be greatly appreciated. As would constructive criticism. :-)**


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